I’m a keen scuba diver, and diving is something that is an extremely relaxing hobby for me.
However, it is the sort of hobby that you have to have a certain level of health to do and (generally) you have to plan for. To go on trips and holidays and so on demands committing your time and money often weeks or months in advance.
I’ve not dived since November last year. As you know I have been doing IVF fairly solidly for all of 2013 so this has got in the way of my diving.
I had an appointment for an internal scan today at 9am to see whether the first part of the IVF process had worked.
The husband was working in town at 10am and needed to drive there, and he very kindly offered to go a bit early to drive me to the clinic. This meant that I could have an extra half hour in bed, and that he would be able to attend the appointment, and that then he could drop me in town for a swift journey home for me. This would be the first time he came to a routine appointment so that seemed like a really good opportunity for him to see what it is all about.
So we got there at 9am and waited in the waiting room. And waited. And waited. At 9.35am the husband had to bail because he needed to get to his meeting. And I waited a bit more. I was finally seen at 10am. Because they were ‘busy’.
As I’m now undertaking my third attempt at IVF within a calendar year I’ve been thinking about how IVF and work fit together.
A lot of women work when they are doing IVF. Not all of course, I have heard of plenty who have never worked or who give up work to try and get pregnant. But the IVF clinic has everything set up to be convenient for working women. The vast majority of the appointments are between 8am and 9.30am with the intention of women being able to drop in before they go to the office.
I’m a self employed consultant, I work mainly from home on short term overlapping contracts. It is a strategic job and I am experienced, so I would be pretty high up if I was doing the same thing in a bigger company. In many ways this is a great way to live my life. I love my job, I’m in control of my own destiny, I can work as much or little as I want, and should I be lucky enough to have a baby I will be able to ramp the work up and down to suit my childcare needs.
But how does this fit in with IVF?
So it is a week and a half since I have had the new IVF drug in me, and I must say it has been going very well. I’d say better than the alternative that I had taken the last two times.
With the last drug I felt emotionally ok but not myself in quite an uncomfortable way, and I had no libido at all.
With this drug I feel very close to normal, plus like last time I have had no pain or sickness or menopause symptoms.
Counselling has come around again.
On the whole I’m feeling normal – or maybe even good – so no desperate need for the counselling, but I do think it helps to keep me on track to have this specialist service each month.
Got this letter in the post today. So that’s awkward, cos I’m already doing it. Oops. Admin error!
While I’m here, one of my lovely regular followers recently asked me this question:
I’m feeling totally normal so far, this is awesome (touch wood!), so I thought I’d cast my mind waaaaaaaaaay back and tell you how stories such as ours start.
In order to be allowed to do IVF you need to be diagnosed with some sort of infertility.
Here’s how it worked for us.
I bought a new nightdress this weekend, for the frozen embryo transfer. Being more of a pyjama fan I didn’t previously have a nightie and this has been fairly inconvenient for the two embryo transfers I’ve had before. When you get there they ask you to wear nightwear to walk across to the room where they do the transfer and you get up on a bed then you have to take your PJ bottoms off. It isn’t really set up for this, they hold towels up and you have to wriggle about to get them off and then back on again at the end. A nightie is much better you can just roll it up. I previously didn’t bother getting a nightie specially as I saw it as a waste of money and an admission of my expectation that I would need to use it several times. And that didn’t seem very hopeful. Ah well, here we are. I thought if I bought said nightie at this point I could pretend to myself that it wasn’t a big deal or a special purchase.
Today cycle three of IVF started properly as I am now on the IVF drugs. This will be a thaw cycle, using a frozen embryo the husband and I made in March.
The first type of drug to be taken is a down-regulator to stop ovulation and simulate the menopause. This is because they don’t want any eggs floating about, they want to keep it all clear for the pre-prepared embryo. Previously I’ve taken these down-regging drugs by self-administered daily injection, but this time I’m trying it a new way.
So I set off for the clinic at 8.30am for a 10am appointment, and arrived ten minutes early. It was so quick, I was taken in straight away and was out again by 10am.
IVF round three starts properly tomorrow – I’ll be going in to the clinic to get an injection to downregulate me and simulate a rapid menopause.
I’m mildly nervous, in that this is unknown because it is a new way of administering the drug.
